Minister of Funds and Regional Policy Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz in a short video on her social media proposed the introduction of a register of premises used on short-term rental platforms. This would take them out of the gray zone. Secondly, she would like to change the tax system so that short-term rental is no longer so profitable. – Unfortunately, this is not the case now – he comments. – It cannot be that hundreds of thousands of apartments in Poland are turned into hotels. Apartments they are not intended to make quick profits. They are a place to live, he adds. Her proposal, although it may have been warmly welcomed by landlords, was criticized by the industry and experts we talked to.
The register of short-term rental apartments is not a new idea. The EU requires this of us
I have been reading comments since morning and I see that the industry does not evaluate the substantive preparation of the minister before the preparation of this film very favorably. The register requested by the minister has been in force for years, and the requirement to centralize it was introduced this year by the European Union
– he says in an interview with Next.Gazeta.pl, president of the Polish Short-Term Rental Association (PSWK), Grzegorz Żurawski.
I just read that the idea for such a registry has been around for a long time, but it has a thousand different problems. A nice idea, but very unlikely to be implemented, and certainly not quickly
– Piotr Kuczyński, chief analyst of the Xelion Investment House, told us.
– In May this year, a regulation of the EU Parliament entered into force – which the minister should know about, as she deals with European funds – which gave Poland and other countries two years to create a central system for registering accommodation facilities – reminds Grzegorz Żurawski.
– No booking platform will be able to offer an accommodation facility without the registration number, which will be in this central register. So what the minister proposes to introduce is already being implemented. However, it is necessary that only business entities can register facilities in this database – only such a solution will take them out of the gray zone, which is what the minister calls for in his video – he adds.
Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz missed. This is not where the problems lie
Our interlocutors point out that even if a register of short-term rental apartments is created, it will not solve the housing problem in Poland. – It is not short-term rental that is responsible for the high rates prices apartments – says Grzegorz Żurawski. He adds that the Polish short-term rental market is basically… things a market square with 90,000 facilities, while in Spain about half a million of them are rented this way. – Therefore, hundreds of thousands of premises are not hitting the market – as the minister is talking about – because now there are several tens of thousands of them and there have never been more of them before – emphasizes the expert.
– No, the register of short-term rental apartments will absolutely not solve the housing crisis. Cheap long-term rental is needed. This is where I think the left is absolutely right. Building a large number of apartments that would be rented relatively cheaply. This would change the system in Poland towards the German one, where approximately 50 percent apartments are rented. Not everyone has to have an apartment, it is important that they have a cheap place to live. Going in this direction would make sense, and all the rest are only apparent moves in my opinion – notes Piotr Kuczyński.
Pełczyńska-Nałęcz was therefore wrong when she suggested that one of the solutions to the housing crisis could be a housing register. – Young people cannot afford to leave home, and one of the reasons is that apartments are increasingly being turned into “hotels”, she said. Nevertheless, such a register is necessary and can solve several problems. But there are others along the way that the industry has to face, which the government does not meet – according to Grzegorz Żurawski.
The huge gray market makes us lose a lot of money. But the government remains deaf
There is currently a discussion on how to introduce the register of short-term rental apartments required by the European Union. – When registering a facility, you will need to declare that you meet the requirements. There are just no such requirements. For five years we have been demanding as PSWK, and together with us, the Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, firefighters and construction supervision have been demanding that we sit down and establish requirements for accommodation facilities. Currently, such requirements exist, but only for hotels. There are still no options for short-term rentals, says Grzegorz Żurawski.
– Local governments complain about the same thing – they have to enforce requirements and declarations of compliance that do not exist. Therefore, each local government does it differently and they are fed up with it. We are constantly talking to local governments about what regulations should be introduced and how the market should be regulated under this EU regulation, he said. – And we agree on the shape of these regulations and the need to eliminate the gray zone, which also harms municipalities – he added.
PSWK therefore calls for a general interpretation that revenues from short-term rental accommodation services must be accounted for as revenues from business activities. – This results from Polish law, and 60 percent the market does not do this – notes Grzegorz Żurawski.
For 90 thousand accommodation facilities, 60 percent this is a gray area. We estimate that the budget loses about PLN 1 billion annually
– says the president of PSWK.
He added that PSWK is talking about the problem with local governments, which are also losing out. He adds that some of them try to fight this on their own and, for example, do not register facilities in their databases that are not run by business entities. – But now you can post your offers without a registration number, so local governments can't really do much. The Minister of Finance can do a lot, as he can eliminate the gray zone very quickly, because the DAC7 directive is already in force – says the president of PSWK.
– We know that the Airbnb and Booking portals provided this data to the Polish tax authorities several months ago. So the government already has the data. All you need to do is easily compare them with business activity data. It will be immediately clear who is deriving income from the so-called short-term rental settles them in accordance with the law, or pretends to be a long-term rental and avoids taxation – says Grzegorz Żurawski.
We are still waiting for the Ministry of Sport and Tourism to create space for discussion, because for now we are talking among ourselves, i.e. with local governments and traditional hoteliers – what is important, in this wide group, we agree on the direction of the necessary regulations and specific solutions. However, the ministry does not conduct dialogue with the broadly understood industry, but prepares some proposals on its own. We are waiting for an inter-ministerial team, because there are many different problems raised by various bodies, various solutions to these problems are being developed, which we would like to present to Minister Nitras
– summed up the president of PSWK.